


Jagged edges

by FreeShavocadoo



Category: Mayans M.C. (TV)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Mentions of serving as a marine, moderate fluff, short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-05 20:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16818112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeShavocadoo/pseuds/FreeShavocadoo
Summary: Sometimes, Coco wants nothing more than to drift into the poisonous thoughts rotting in his own head.Then, Angel's arms wrap around him and he remembers who he is again.





	1. Chapter 1

He’d seen enough deserts to last a lifetime. Spanning miles, endless streams of coarse sand that would get under your fingernails and scratch your face raw, make your eyes water until all you could see was the blazing red of the sun and the breeze shifting the sand along further. The feeling of the sun beating down on him is a regular one, too. It’s homelier than the desert is, with less feeling of imminent danger. They laugh at him in the MC for riding with his scarf pulled up over his face, sunglasses obscuring eyes that want to track every minute detail. They would, though. They hadn’t felt the sun beating down on them for the second month out on tour, skin on their face so sensitive to the touch that by the time moving a scarf up becomes a sweaty and unbearable but better alternative, it’s too raw to even brush against. He’d always favoured the softer things in life, even if all he’d ever known was jagged and rough.

“Coco,” the voice beside him is rough with sleep and familiar. Familiar enough it doesn’t make him jump out of his fucking skin and reach for the gun he knows he has under his pillow, “Coco.”

Angel Reyes had always had a certain assertiveness that’d make any other man at risk of losing his teeth to Coco’s fist, yet it was the smile that assured it was not arrogance but just general male bravado and cockiness. He’d been the same since Coco had met him all those years ago in some dive of a bar, slamming back tequila the way he only did when he was back for a few months before shipping out again. Angel never liked to mind his own business, he’d sat beside him and coaxed him into conversation with a finesse Coco doesn’t think anyone ever expects from a guy of Angel’s size. Unlike his brother who’d knocked on the door for a gun not that long after, Angel isn’t soft stares and athleticism incarnate. He’s got hard features from a life lived the way most people live around here, with their bare knuckles and willpower. The only thing Coco thinks they remotely have in common is their gentle eyes, like those dogs at the shelter everyone wants to take home. Coco could never stand dog shelters, having gone to one a few years back after his final tour at the suggestion of an old fellow marine. He didn’t think it’d helped him at all, seeing these warm and trusting eyes staring at him like he was worth something. He’d never been looked at like that before.

It’s Angel’s tactile nature that brings him back to the present, a calloused hand slapping his cheek gently. Nothing like the way Celia used to smack him into next week, less like the average mother around their area would for a child heavily misbehaving and more the way a prostitute who calls herself your mother would for trying to get one of her clients to get the fuck out of your space.

“What?” Coco’s voice is rough too, having been dragging on a cigarette since he’d woken up a mere ten minutes prior, jittery from something outside banging with enough echo to resemble sniper fire.

“The fuck is going on?” Angel lifts his head from the pillow, eyes that are too tentative and too aware, this weird combination of concern and anger. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Coco wishes he could put into words the fact that a whole fucking platoon driving past the window wouldn’t wake Angel Reyes up from his sleep, too busy tangling his long limbs around a blanket he’d discarded the moment his eyes had closed. Coco was the opposite, always liking the weight of the blanket on him. Something to make him grounded. Angels arm was usually a nice compromise but if he fell asleep first there was no way Coco could lift his arm on his own, it was practically dead weight.

“S’nothin’,” Coco grumbles, putting his cigarette out on the ashtray beside his bed, running his fingers through his hair that seems far too long but he’ll be damned if he goes back to regulation haircuts after all of this time, “just couldn’t go back to sleep.”

The grumbling and muttering into the pillow is muffled Spanish, words Coco is very familiar with by this point. The only reason he doesn’t cave Angel’s head in for insulting him this way is because it’s Angel, so of course he won’t. It isn’t the shrill voice of Celia or the slurred Spanish of some drunk bastard at a bar, so his fists don’t clench until his knuckles whiten.

As if he knows, which he somehow always does, Angels arm winds around his waist, pulling him back down onto the bed properly until he’s fully lay down beside him. Where Coco is skin and bones, all inked skin and jagged angles from a lack of appetite and a lifetime of borderline malnutrition, smoking and alcohol, Angel is built like a brick wall. Though Coco would have to say he’s more malleable to lie beside than he’d have expected. He’s warm, so warm, and it’s like Coco is melting under his touch until he’s just a puddle. He hums softly against Coco’s neck, facial hair both scratching and tickling at the same time, lips dragging to his collarbone.

“Stay. We don’t have anywhere to be today, so stay.” Angel’s voice is scratchy too, his words accompanied by a playful bite to the expanse of Coco’s neck, followed by a small kiss and arms that tighten around him so perfectly that he’s not sure why he would ever want to leave.

“You’re so fucking clingy, Angel.” Coco might say Angel’s name with an emphasis he doesn’t offer anyone else, the pronunciation just the way Angel loves hearing it, the one that gets the instant response of Angels full weight half on top of him. The weight that he’d dream about when lying in a sleeping bag in the Middle East, the sinful fucking mouth that would make his stomach pool with heat and his head rush a thousand miles faster than usual.

“Shut the fuck up, _Johnny._ ” He teases, eyes crinkling as he leans down and kisses Coco with the ferocity only Angel can adequately deliver, like he’s about to devour Coco entirely but is also trying to romance or seduce him. Nobody would ever do it for him the same way Angel could.

“Fine. I’ll stay.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Ey, pass me a light.” Angel demands, stretching over Coco as if he’s an inconvenience in his pursuit of nicotine, eyes trained on the shiny lighter that is always on Coco’s bedside table. He had a penchant for smoking in bed that Angel seemed to have taken up wholeheartedly.

Coco stretches his fingers out, passing the lighter to Angel who snatches it to light his cigarette, taking a deep and long inhale before blowing out the smoke carelessly as he reclines back into his sprawled position. Coco thinks it might be the sexiest thing he’s ever seen.

“Wassup?” Angel stares, quizzical and groggy, stretched out in just his boxers with hair that makes him look completely wild. “You’re starin’ at me.”

“So?” Coco isn’t defensive, though his voice always has this hard and blunt tone to it no matter how hard he tries to squash it.

It’s rather easily explained when he thinks about it. Prostitute mother, incarceration, marine service. There were a million ways to beat a dog down, cage it up and make it bite you. It was making it integrate back into general society again that was the problem. Prison had its own charm in a way, he had routine and consistency in his life. He’d avoided his children, though he’d never even really though of them as his own kids, wanting them to have grown elsewhere in a place they wouldn’t end up hating like he did. The marines offered that same routine and he was damn good at it too, even if he always struggled to stop his eyes flicking everywhere at once with his finger always on the trigger. He’d had the last laugh when he’d shot that shitty fucking cigar right out of his CO’s mouth from half a mile away, though. He, like many other people in Coco’s life, thought he was good for nothing. Well, he’d been good for something then, even if it had resulted in a section 8. That’s what they’d called him before the incident anyway, “here comes section 8,” they’d say.

“You’re always stuck in your head.” Angel’s voice snaps him back to reality, to smoke billowing past his head and the sudden cold creeping on and around him before he realises the blanket he’d been under must’ve been kicked off. Angel flings it fully over him, always oddly attentive, shaking his head. “Like a fucking snake.”

“It’s cold.” Coco grumbles, pulling the blanket up until it was practically just under his chin, shivering slightly. “Ain’t got no fucking heating in here, man.”

“You sure?” The tone of his voice makes Coco’s eyes flit instantly to him, seeing crinkled eyes staring right back with a shark-like grin accompanying them, Angel’s entire body now curled beside him. He practically had to curl around Coco since there was never enough room length wise on the bed for him, he was too tall. It often resulted in Coco waking up trapped under one of Angel’s legs that’d wound around him in his sleep, or the alternative in which Coco would be over Angel like some kind of weird blanket.

“Fuck off.” Coco grumbles, moving closer to Angel until his back is pressed against a firm and warm chest, familiar arms winding around him.

It took a while for him not to instantly flinch from Angel’s touches, back when they were first getting to know each-other and Coco felt like every fucking move was sending sparks into the air, as if every stare directed at each other resulted in crackles of electricity. It was like the universe’s idea of a cosmic joke. He’d been kicked out of the marines with a section 8, which no doubt he would’ve been anyway if he’d expressed the thoughts he’d had about Angel to anyone because of DADT. He still remembers the reaction of some of the Corps when one of their fellow marines had been discharged under section 8 when he’d let slip his current partner was a man. That was the way it went with the marines, with all of the armed forces. You let something slip and people would jump on it, since policies dictated it. The third time he’d shipped out was after he’d met Angel in that bar, intoxicated and out of his mind from a combination of weed and tequila. Coco was always bored out of his mind when he’d have time off, having decided to invite Angel back to his shithole of a house for the remaining week he had left before shipping out again. They’d been relaxed with one another, smoking and drinking together and talking about shit Coco didn’t necessarily want to but found himself spilling anyway. It was in a weed induced haze that Angel’s weight had trapped him down the first time, his eyes somehow still impossibly sharp even though they’d been smoking all day.

_“Johnny,” he’d murmured, his voice so husky that Coco had to physically restrain himself from completely melting, which is fucking absurd, “I’ve been saying your fuckin’ name the past five minutes.”_

_“You thought you’d climb on me to get my attention?” Coco replies, sniggering at the entire situation, as if he isn’t hyperaware of Angel’s mouth mere inches from his own. “Nobody fuckin’ calls me Johnny anyway.”_

_“Oh yeah? You ain’t had a problem with it until now.” Angel leans further down and Coco is begging to a God he hasn’t prayed to in years, since he was a boy, for Angel to just kiss him until he can barely breathe. Something to give him some semblance of feeling again, to feel his blood thrumming through his body and running hot the way it would when he was under fire and looking down the barrel of a gun._

_“Didn’t say I had a problem, carnal.”_

_It’s like the word sets off the primitive part of Angel, his hands holding his weight up either side of Coco’s head now tensed as he leans down to kiss him. The scratch of facial hair is inconsequential, even if Coco’s face is still sensitive to everything, especially since he’s let the slightest stubble grow in that he’ll have to half-assed shave before going back out to the Middle East. Angel groans into his mouth and Coco knows he’ll be thinking about this for the rest of his tour, however long he’s out there for, he’ll be dreaming about a man who’s taller than he has any right to be and too good-looking for his own fucking good. He wishes he didn’t grasp onto Angel’s broad shoulders like he was a lifeline, even in the afterglow of their morning of smoking weed everything now seems to be in such focus it’s almost too much for him._

_“Good.” Angel says, dragging his mouth off from Coco’s at the last light-headed second, looking very pleased with himself._

Now though, it’s not that dissimilar to being in the Corps. Nobody in the MC suspects a thing and it’d be over both of their dead bodies if they did. That kind of shit didn’t fly in Santo Padre, a community built on Catholicism, drug cartels and poverty. It’s not that the men of the MC would be morally opposed to it, that in itself would be laughable. But a group built on being alpha males, on living in the grey area just didn’t allow such a thing. Coco was fine with keeping Angel as his secret, the same way his private life had always been just that. Private. He was fine with his reputation as the enigma, the one that nobody really knew anything of substance about. That suited him just fine.

“You think your brother knows?” Coco’s voice is slow, the warmth of Angel’s arms and the blanket making him already woozy with sleep, his eyes fluttering.

“Nah, he’s got his own shit goin’ on. To him we don’t spend any more time together than I do with the rest.” Angel replies, patting Coco’s stomach and chuckling. “Ez wouldn’t give a shit anyway. He knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

“Ain’t the poi-,”

“I know, Coco,” Angel interjects, aware that it is a sensitive topic for Coco, always has been and always will be, “he doesn’t know.”

How would Coco explain to anyone else in the world that he only liked _one_ man anyway? The wholehearted kind of like that left him stripped bare, vulnerable and scared because he cared so much? Love, Coco thinks. That’s what he should call it. But there were too many labels and connotations to that word for him to want the weight of that pressing him down until he couldn’t breathe too.

“I gotta go.” Angel sighs, staring at his phone screen with a wistful expression. “Ez needs somethin’.”

“Fuckin’ boy scout.” Coco grumbles, already pissed off at the prospect of Angel’s arms moving from him. When they do, he practically pouts into his pillow, furious at himself for being so bothered by it still, after all of this time. “You’ll be back later?”

“Yeah, yeah. Should be.” Angel leans down, half dressed, placing a kiss on Coco’s forehead that spreads warmth from the top of his head to his toes, the affection always somehow too much and just enough. He’d not had much of it in his life, so he might as well enjoy it while he can.

“Good.” He watches Angel pull the remainder of his clothes on, watches his ridiculous swagger out of the door, hearing the bike pull of after a few minutes. He always hid it behind one of the banged up cars in Coco’s front yard, under some tarp. He didn’t need anyone picking up on the fact there was always two bikes parked outside of his house and if anyone came in, it wouldn’t be the first time Angel almost had to cripple himself by hiding under the bed or slipping out of the window. After all, there wasn’t always an excuse as to why he was there- the MC’s friendships only stretched so far.

As the motorbike drives away, rolling like thunder in the distance, Coco stares longingly at the door and hopes that by the time he wakes up from sleeping he’ll feel Angel wrapped around him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably won't be the last thing I write for this pair, but it will be it for now.  
> Comments always appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Short and sweet. Comments appreciated!


End file.
